Ancient Greek playwrights had a simple way to get themselves out of any corner they’d written themselves into: some god, even more bored than usual with immortality, would kill a few minutes by intervening in the mortal drama below. (I have an impression of the gods acting like twelve-year-old buys with a magnifying glass, watching an anthill, wondering what catastrophe they can think up next.) God in the machine (Deus en machina) is largely discredited today as a fictional device.
Humans haven’t changed all that much since sapiens became our last name. We’re taller, better groomed, and less prone to be killed and eaten by the same creature we hoped to kill and eat ourselves. Aside from that, most changes to human life have been technological, not evolutionary. Fire, the wheel, sliced bread. Stuff like that. Modern writers still need a way to get out of self-inflicted traps. I’m too middlebrow to say how literary writers do it (assuming they have any story in their book at all), but I know what’s popular with mystery writers:
Serial killers.
Not sure now to explain the villain’s motivations? Make him a serial killer. Serial killers are by definition broken, so you don’t really have to explain them. Maybe they were abused as children. Maybe not. Maybe they’re just fucked up. Doesn’t matter. No one really understands what makes a serial killer; they have some things in common, but nothing definitive. True, there’s the triad of things shrinks look for after the fact: bed wetting, setting fires, and animal abuse, but even all three of those don’t always mean someone will become a serial killer.
I recently read an acclaimed book that, while I didn’t care much for it, had many admirable aspects. The author wrapped me up in an improbable situation until I really wanted to see how he resolved it. Then he dumped it all on a serial killer who preyed on women and then committed suicide, which allowed to evade writing about what came after the heroes figured out who it was, which can be as involved as the actual detection. It was a huge letdown, and I think it colored my acceptance—or lack thereof—of the rest of the book..
Serial killers are a cheat. They typically prey on women (they’re nuts, not stupid; a man might kick their ass), which is another trick to add suspense, as danger to women is tried and true way to add some cheap thrills to a suspense story.
There have probably been more fictional serial killers created in the last thirty years than have existed in all of human history, if we distinguish serial killers from people who just happen to kill a lot. What is the fascination? Why are writers—and, apparently, readers—drawn to them? They’re the most formulaic element in the formula for a “breakout” novel: they raise the stakes. Place the hero, or someone close to the hero, in ever mounting jeopardy. How many more trees have to die before people get tired of being jerked around like this?
Showing posts with label mystery. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mystery. Show all posts
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
A True Mystery
It started out like a normal Saturday: grocery shopping, run a couple of errands, then home for lunch. Last Saturday’s first errand was a trip to the Post Office to pick up Express Mail that had been waiting since Wednesday.
It was a cardboard mailer, standard letter size. A book, I thought, though why someone would spend $25.15 to Express Mail a book for review was beyond me.I opened the envelope walking to the car. No book. Two pieces of cardboard stiffened the envelope to protect the small package inside, wrapped in the front page of Tuesday’s San Diego paper. Inside the paper was a microcassette recorder. Taped to the recorder was a note written in a feminine hand:
Play me.
I had my finger on the button when my inner mystery fan kicked in. Isn’t this the scene where the unsuspecting galoot blows up and they roll the opening credits? I put the recorder back in the envelope and called the Beloved Spousal Equivalent and Research Assistant. She said not to push the button. She’d look into it. I gave her the name and return address and went about my business. If mailing it didn’t blow it up, driving it to the supermarket shouldn’t cause any problems.
The return address was a beachfront condo in San Diego, currently for sale. (Good luck with that.) The recorder looked normal, if a little scuffed. Still, I didn’t recognize the name or address, my address was in an unusual format, and spending $25 to ensure that only I could pick it up didn’t sit right. Probably too cautious, but some mistakes you only get to make once.
The FBI referred us to the Postal Inspectors. The first guy I talked to asked all the expected questions: describe the envelope, who do you work for, any reason to think someone would want to do you harm? When none of those answers alarmed him, he said I should play the tape to hear what it said.
“Excuse me,” I said. “I don’t mean to be paranoid, but I could have done that without involving the federal government. If this thing blows up, I’m going to be pissed.”
“WAIT!! DON’T PUSH THE BUTTON!!”
He hooked me up with a Dangerous Materials Investigator, who asked me all the same questions, plus a few more. Listened to what I had to say, decided it was worth coming over with his cool tools. Used a sniffer to check for biological, chemical, or radiation hazards. Negative. The BSERA was bummed. She thought a positive test would earn us a free housecleaning.
The agent took three X-rays, let us look at them over his shoulder.
“You know what this looks like. Mr. King?”
‘Yeah. A tape recorder.”
I played the tape while he packed up. A woman and a man went through what sounded like the first two pages of a story or screenplay. The woman was a writer; the man could have been a shrink or a cop. She told him about Julia, a character in the woman’s first story. About how she saw Julia—not a woman who looked like Julia, but Julia—talking to a hotel desk clerk, using the exact words as in the story. Told him how it couldn’t be a coincidence, because Julia then did exactly what she did in the story: took out a gun and blew her head off. This was the woman’s curse. For over twenty years, her characters had been coming to life. Not just to her, or on the page. For real.
That’s all that was on the tape, and all I know. True story. Swear to God.
It was a cardboard mailer, standard letter size. A book, I thought, though why someone would spend $25.15 to Express Mail a book for review was beyond me.I opened the envelope walking to the car. No book. Two pieces of cardboard stiffened the envelope to protect the small package inside, wrapped in the front page of Tuesday’s San Diego paper. Inside the paper was a microcassette recorder. Taped to the recorder was a note written in a feminine hand:
Play me.
I had my finger on the button when my inner mystery fan kicked in. Isn’t this the scene where the unsuspecting galoot blows up and they roll the opening credits? I put the recorder back in the envelope and called the Beloved Spousal Equivalent and Research Assistant. She said not to push the button. She’d look into it. I gave her the name and return address and went about my business. If mailing it didn’t blow it up, driving it to the supermarket shouldn’t cause any problems.
The return address was a beachfront condo in San Diego, currently for sale. (Good luck with that.) The recorder looked normal, if a little scuffed. Still, I didn’t recognize the name or address, my address was in an unusual format, and spending $25 to ensure that only I could pick it up didn’t sit right. Probably too cautious, but some mistakes you only get to make once.
The FBI referred us to the Postal Inspectors. The first guy I talked to asked all the expected questions: describe the envelope, who do you work for, any reason to think someone would want to do you harm? When none of those answers alarmed him, he said I should play the tape to hear what it said.
“Excuse me,” I said. “I don’t mean to be paranoid, but I could have done that without involving the federal government. If this thing blows up, I’m going to be pissed.”
“WAIT!! DON’T PUSH THE BUTTON!!”
He hooked me up with a Dangerous Materials Investigator, who asked me all the same questions, plus a few more. Listened to what I had to say, decided it was worth coming over with his cool tools. Used a sniffer to check for biological, chemical, or radiation hazards. Negative. The BSERA was bummed. She thought a positive test would earn us a free housecleaning.
The agent took three X-rays, let us look at them over his shoulder.
“You know what this looks like. Mr. King?”
‘Yeah. A tape recorder.”
I played the tape while he packed up. A woman and a man went through what sounded like the first two pages of a story or screenplay. The woman was a writer; the man could have been a shrink or a cop. She told him about Julia, a character in the woman’s first story. About how she saw Julia—not a woman who looked like Julia, but Julia—talking to a hotel desk clerk, using the exact words as in the story. Told him how it couldn’t be a coincidence, because Julia then did exactly what she did in the story: took out a gun and blew her head off. This was the woman’s curse. For over twenty years, her characters had been coming to life. Not just to her, or on the page. For real.
That’s all that was on the tape, and all I know. True story. Swear to God.
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